Captain Sidney Crosby was injured in the quarterfinal against Team Czechia and would miss the remainder of the tournament.
In the gold medal game against Team USA on Feb. 22, Canada could not solve goalie Connor Hellebuyck and was defeated 2-1 on a Jack Hughes overtime goal that left Cooper and his players crushed.
Then, just a day later after that devastating loss, as he was making his way back to Tampa from Milan, more heartbreak came when Cooper was blindsided with the news that his father, Bob, died.
It was a double whammy of the cruelest kind, one that will resonate with Cooper for, well, even he doesn’t know for how long.
“It’s like a grand scope of emotions,” he says, looking for the proper words.
“I always wonder if first-year head coach in this league Jon Cooper would have been able to handle what’s gone on now. But it tests you; there’s no doubt about that. And for a variety of reasons.”
He sighed.
“As much as you may plan for, you know, eventually to lose a loved one, you can’t. You don’t know until it happens how tough it is. And the fact that it happens 24 hours after we fell in the gold medal game, well …
“The most accurate thing I can say about it is that it put things into perspective.”
Which is very understandable, considering the circumstances that led to him finding out about his father’s death.
“I went Milan-Montreal,” he explained. “And then we missed our next flight because of a delay, so then I got on another flight and left my family behind because I had to get back to Tampa.”
On that particular flight, which was heading to Orlando, Cooper received the news about his father, presumably at 30,000 feet.
The next morning, he was on another flight, this one to Vancouver, the area where his dad had been residing.
“It was a lot of time zones,” he said.
It was the whirlwind of all whirlwinds. And for Cooper, as he tries to move forward, it always comes back to that word again.
Perspective.
“Look, I would never trade anything,” he says. “I mean, my parents got to see me win championships all the way up [to the NHL]. They got to see the Stanley Cup. My dad got to see me coach at the 4 Nations tournament (which Canada won last year) and got to watch me coaching the Olympics. And even though he wasn’t there, he was with me the entire time.
“I don’t know what he would have said to me, but I think that, now that he’s gone, he’s up there with Mom. And I wonder what the debate is now that we lost to the U.S. She was an American.”
Cooper’s mother, Christine, died on Nov. 6, 2020, in Prince George, British Columbia, the city where Jon was born and raised.
For Jon Cooper, the fact that he’s back behind the bench is a welcomed distraction after missing the Lightning’s first two post-Olympic break games because of Bob’s passing. Tampa Bay is in a dogfight with the Buffalo Sabres for first place in the Atlantic Division, with Buffalo holding a two-point lead following an 8-7 win in a high-scoring classic at KeyBank Center on Sunday.
Through it all, his players feel for what his coach has gone and is still going through.
Asked about that very subject, Lightning forward Brandon Hagel, who also played for Cooper with Team Canada, was on the verge of welling up.
“Yeah, I mean, you could almost get a little emotional for him,” Hagel said.
“He’s the best to ever do it, in my opinion. He’s won at every single level. There’s a reason why he’s coaching the Canadian Olympic team. There’s a reason he dresses like the way he did (at the outdoor game) -- because he can. Because he’s the best ever. He’s the best coach in this league. And the way he handles himself, especially in those up-and-down moments, that’s not easy. And to come around and still have a smile on his face after everything he’s been through, that’s pretty impressive.
“He treats us like his kids. We’re one big family in here and it starts with him.”
And, given what Cooper has experienced in the past month, family is everything.
